


be comfortable, creature

by lumberchicken



Series: rabbit bones [2]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-08
Updated: 2016-07-08
Packaged: 2018-07-22 07:19:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7425334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lumberchicken/pseuds/lumberchicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She wants it to mean something.</p>
            </blockquote>





	be comfortable, creature

Spend two years with someone and you can learn a lot about them. Who they are. What they like.  
  
Things they want.  
  


* * *

  
  
There’s a place where Sarah’s brother used to live, just next to her beating heart. Felix flickered there like a tiny candle, a warm comfort, and she fed his light with her memories.  
  
 _Remember when we raced and fell into the mud, and Mrs. S made us hose off outside even though it was freezing cold?_  
  
 _Remember when we learned that we both hated cooked carrots, and we mashed ‘em up with our forks, and S said she’d cook ‘em for every meal after that just to spite us? She never did, though, did she. She never made ‘em again after that._  
  
 _Remember how you’d crawl in my bed when you were scared, Fee? Remember how it felt to lie next to each other and breathe and listen to the night sounds?_  
  
 _Did you try and crawl into my bed that last night, Fee? Was it empty? Did you think I’d left you alone to die? I’d never do that, Fee. I’d never do that. I’d never do that. I’d never do that to you._  
  
The problem is that Felix began to consume her. His fire grew and grew until she was losing herself, just a pale-faced girl with staring, black, bottomless wells for eyes. Until she wasn’t sure, anymore, which was worse, remembering Felix or forgetting him.  
  
In the end, she was forced to make the choice herself. Be consumed, or survive. In the end, she chose to dig in with her own fingernails and search through the blood and bone until she found her brother. In the end, she crushed him into nothingness with her own two hands.  
  
It hurt. It hurt so badly she thought she’d die, and then she didn’t. The wound closed up, because that’s what wounds do—they close up, or they kill you.  
  
Now Sarah has no one’s light inside her. Just bloody fingernails and a scar.  
  


* * *

  
  
There’s a twin, out there somewhere. They’re still looking for her. The other girls are Sarah’s sisters—her genetic identicals—but this one is the other half of her. She wants it to mean something. She wants it to _mean something_. She wants it to—  
  
mean—  
  
something—  
  
but it doesn’t.  
  
She’s got a twin out there who doesn’t know she exists and is better off for it, and she lies awake in the dark hating this girl without a name. Wishing it had been her they’d found, her family they’d killed.  
  
So many girls out there, sharing her face, and none of it means anything.  
  
One twin, nowhere. Dozens of clones, everywhere. One girl down the hall from her.  
  
And it should mean something, but she’s not sure it ever will.  
  


* * *

  
  
Sarah watches Rachel move through the world, which has become very small for both of them, but will someday open up again. When they’re ready for it. When it’s ready for them.  
  
Rachel says nothing unless she’s thought it through first. Rachel makes every word mean something. She’s not much like Sarah at all. No, they’re not alike. Sarah’s not as good at saving up words and making them count, but she’s better at watching, and she watches Rachel.  
  
There’s a river in England, the River Wharfe. It’s wide, most of it, but one section called the Strid has narrow banks, the sides crowding in on themselves, forcing the river into a smaller and smaller area. But all that water’s got to go somewhere, and it goes down, deeper, deeper, turning the river on its side. Down into a series of tunnels and jagged rocks and underwater currents that will drag a person down and not let them go.  
  
The Strid, it looks safe enough from the surface. But every single person who’s fallen into it has drowned.  
  
Rachel is like that, Sarah knows. She looks safe, but then she’s got you, and you’re dead. Sucked in, smashed against the rocks, trapped.  
  
Drowning.  
  


* * *

  
  
Sarah’s not as good at words, but she watches, and she learns, and she waits.  
  
“I heard something the other day,” she says over breakfast. She watches Rachel peel a hardboiled egg. “It was… interesting.”  
  
“Was it,” Rachel says, not looking up. She sounds bored, and even these words aren’t wasted. Was it. Not a question, a statement. Two words that also mean _you are interrupting my meal_ , and _the things you find interesting don’t interest me_ , and _you aren’t anyone worth listening to_.  
  
“It was,” Sarah says, and waits.  
  
Rachel peels the egg. She wipes her fingers on a cloth napkin. She takes a drink of orange juice. Finally, she looks at Sarah from under her eyelashes, not even raising her chin. “Go on,” she says, caught and hating that she’s been caught.  
  
“I was getting my blood drawn,” Sarah says, “and I heard someone say that I’m not like all the rest of you.”  
  
She watches the meaning of the words hit Rachel. _All the rest of you._  
  
“I can have kids, someday,” Sarah says, in a voice so blithe she wonders if it’s almost too much. No. Rachel’s gone very still. “Funny, yeah? I don’t even want kids.”  
  
It’s not a lie. She doesn’t want kids.  
  
She wants the look in Rachel’s eyes. The way they go slightly wide. The way she’s suddenly afraid as she realizes that Sarah’s got something she _wants_.   
  
“Liar,” Rachel says. It means _i was supposed to be important_ , and _i hate that you’re here with me eating the same food as me sharing this life with me_ , and _i want i want I WANT_.  
  
“No,” Sarah says. She grins. Her teeth are knives, her tongue is a whip, and she’s cutting Rachel open. Ripping her chest apart and whispering something that’ll stay forever. A scar to match Sarah’s. “Guess it was me who was made for this life,” she says. It means _guess you weren’t_.  
  


* * *

  
  
Spend two years with someone and you can learn a lot about them. Who they are. What they like.  
  
Things they want.

**Author's Note:**

> This AU sure did turn into something I want to write! all the time! whoops! ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


End file.
